US Tells India It's Mulling Caps On H-1B Visas For Nations That Force Foreign Companies To Store Data Locally (reuters.com) 238
PolygamousRanchKid shares a report from Reuters: The United States has told India it is considering caps on H-1B work visas for nations that force foreign companies to store data locally, three sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, widening the two countries' row over tariffs and trade. India, which has upset companies such as Mastercard and irked the U.S. government with stringent new rules on data storage, is the largest recipient of these temporary visas, most of them to workers at big Indian technology firms.
A Washington-based industry source aware of India-U.S. negotiations also said the United States was deliberating capping the number of H-1B visas in response to global data storage rules. The move, however, was not solely targeted at India, the source said. Most affected by any such caps would be India's more than $150 billion IT sector, including Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys Ltd, which uses H-1B visas to fly engineers and developers to service clients in the United States, its biggest market. Major Silicon Valley tech companies also hire workers using the visas. Since last year, the Trump administration has been upset that U.S. companies such as Mastercard and Visa suffer due to regulations in several countries that it says are protectionist and increasingly require companies to store more data locally. India last year mandated foreign firms to store their payments data 'only in India' for supervision, and New Delhi is working on a broad data protection law that would impose strict rules for local processing of data it considers sensitive. Senior Indian government officials were briefed last week on a U.S. plan to cap H-1B visas issued each year to Indians at between 10% and 15% of the annual quota. Currently, there is no country-specific limit on the 85,000 H-1B work visas granted each year, and an estimated 70% go to Indians.
A Washington-based industry source aware of India-U.S. negotiations also said the United States was deliberating capping the number of H-1B visas in response to global data storage rules. The move, however, was not solely targeted at India, the source said. Most affected by any such caps would be India's more than $150 billion IT sector, including Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys Ltd, which uses H-1B visas to fly engineers and developers to service clients in the United States, its biggest market. Major Silicon Valley tech companies also hire workers using the visas. Since last year, the Trump administration has been upset that U.S. companies such as Mastercard and Visa suffer due to regulations in several countries that it says are protectionist and increasingly require companies to store more data locally. India last year mandated foreign firms to store their payments data 'only in India' for supervision, and New Delhi is working on a broad data protection law that would impose strict rules for local processing of data it considers sensitive. Senior Indian government officials were briefed last week on a U.S. plan to cap H-1B visas issued each year to Indians at between 10% and 15% of the annual quota. Currently, there is no country-specific limit on the 85,000 H-1B work visas granted each year, and an estimated 70% go to Indians.
so .... (Score:3, Insightful)
Blackmail basically
Re:so .... (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't call it Blackmail as much as I would call it removing the favored advantage India has in the H-1B market.
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Re:so .... (Score:5, Interesting)
It will be interesting to see if they apply the same conditions to Europe. We have much stronger privacy rules so some data has to be stored here and can't be exported. Not to mention us blocking US courts' access to data stored in the EU.
Re:so .... (Score:5, Informative)
It will be interesting to see if they apply the same conditions to Europe. We have much stronger privacy rules so some data has to be stored here and can't be exported. Not to mention us blocking US courts' access to data stored in the EU.
Considering the European country with the most H1B visa holders (UK) has less than 1% of the total H1B beneficiaries as India, the US could lower country caps significantly without affecting any European countries. Indian citizens hold about 75% of all H1B Visas so they are likely the only ones who will be affected.
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Re:so .... (Score:4, Insightful)
Talking about shooting oneself in the foot. H1B is for aiding US economy. That's like imposing tariffs on workforce. You have to pay the price, not India.
You mean it's for aiding US corporations in keeping wages low. That's pretty much all it does.
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Talking about shooting oneself in the foot. H1B is for aiding US economy. That's like imposing tariffs on workforce. You have to pay the price, not India.
Define 'the economy'. Does it mean what DOW or NASDAQ or SNP are at the end of the day, or does that mean whether the average citizen has a job that covers his/her needs? In theory, H1B was supposed to allow in people w/ skills that are in shortage in this country. In practice, H1B is a tool to beat down the market price of workers. Like right now, at the going rate, a monthly salary of $1000 in the US translates into Rs70k in India, so they can afford to work for, say, $1000 a month, which an American
Re: so .... (Score:2)
H1B is for aiding US economy.
Correct; the economy: i.e. Wall Street, not society.
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But if they comply with it. It will have been blackmail.
Face it. Storing data locally makes sense. Americans want their data stored locally. And so does every population in the World.
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Face it. Storing data locally makes sense. Americans want their data stored locally. And so does every population in the World.
I HRTDFA but everybody can store their data wherever they choose without penalty. If people are storing their data locally because they *legally have to*, then there is a penalty.
Re:so .... (Score:5, Insightful)
US total control over the entire planetary population, yeah go fuck yourselves. Every country on the planet should demand that their citizens data is only stored and processed locally and never ever exported. US trying to force it's corrupt laws in other countries at the behest of corrupt US corporation, yeah, they can both go fuck themselves.
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US total control over the entire planetary population, yeah go fuck yourselves.
As someone informed me, the US is the most powerful superpower on this planet and so can fuck everyone at will. If the US can't win the game which was originally designed/promoted by the US, the US will just slap you with some bad labels and change to a new game behind you. What can you do?
I think Hitler also thought the same way.
Re: so .... (Score:2)
which was originally designed/promoted by the US
I hear this every once in a while and honestly it makes no sense. The more likely scenario is that the US is just better at playing a game that has always existed.
The US is a meager 330mil; ~2.5x the island nation of Japan! And it is heavily fragmented. Calling a New Yorker or Texan an American isn't much different than calling a Spaniard a European. There are two major political parties at the national level, but each is at least fragmented into three units.
There is no official language. There are more
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I agree w/ the proposed policy - am disappointed that the US stepped down from the threat of capping the visas, which should be done anyway. The US is justified in limiting the number of H1Bs that companies can have and use. India too is however justified in requiring that the data of their citizens reside on computers physically located within their borders.
Just apply Alan Derschowitz' 'shoe on the other foot' test: would the US be okay w/ data of US citizens being stored on a server in, say, UK? I kn
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HRTDFA? I tried googling it but I can't find a definition for that acronym.
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Huh. This is honestly the first time I've ever come across that. TY!
Re:so .... (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't call it blackmail so much as do as I say not as I do.
Every time the US demands to filch through data here, or on foreign servers, other nations think, "Hmmmm...bonus!" and do it to. Some, not this case, are less than savory.
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H-1Bs are not better because they are H-1Bs, they are better because they are top notch in their field. For example, there is a reason that Deloitte, WiPro, Tata, and Infosys, which many, many companies outsource to, and the only reports coming back from their work is "orgasmic."
Call a spade a spade... if US workers were not so clueless, H-1Bs would not be necessary. At least we have the ability to get world class help in IT now.
HAHAHAHA! Good one!
Next, do a "Slavery is freedom" one.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: so .... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a government which thinks tarrifs are working..
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They're essentially saying "Hey, if you force Google/Microsoft/etc to do things it doesn't want to do, then we'll, uh, make things worse for them. Yeah. That'll learn 'em."
You presume Google/Microsoft/etc actually WANT to hire H1-B's. I would posit that they really don't want to hire cheap, low quality engineers, but instead, they feel they are compelled to do so because if they don't cut costs like everybody else is doing, the competition will maybe make more profit than they would and eventually they'll get taken over by the company that built up the largest cash reserve. It's a race to the bottom.
Take away H1-B's equally from everybody and suddenly everybody can breathe a
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American engineers can try to get their jobs back
Engineering unemployment in America is about 2%.
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The purpose of the H1B visa program is not to replace Americans, it's to drive down the wages and benefits of (superior) American tech workers
The alternative is a repeat of manufacturing where a significant portion of the industry moves overseas if US wages for software developers grow too much. Software engineers are still very highly paid in the US, even with H1Bs dragging down wages. The only profession which sees most of its practitioners making more money is in medicine, and that is only maintainable by significantly limiting the number of doctors who are trained and licensed each year. We pay for that with much higher medical costs than mos
Re: so .... (Score:4, Interesting)
Bullshit. In Silicon Valley we cant find enough Americans that are qualified. H1-B is the only other choice to grab some of those newly trained graduates from our universities. H1-Bs pay into social security but canâ(TM)t use any of the entitlements. Itâ(TM)s a win-win. Sure there are some body shops that are abusing H1-B. Crack down on those guys instead and leave the quota for the graduate students.
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Let me fix this for you: "...Silicon Valley can find enough Americans to work for small pay and work 80+ hours a week that are qualified...".
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Bullshit. In Silicon Valley we cant find enough Americans that are qualified.
I'd say your bigger problem in SV is finding a place to live.
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So basically paying enough that people can afford decent housing.
Even for people "paid enough" there is a housing shortage.
The BA is a disaster because of years of NIMBY bullshit from the landed gentry and those that followed.
People move there, live there a few years and think their locals, and then complain about the same problems they created by moving there.
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If you can't find enough qualified workers, you're either not paying enough or you're not training enough. Or both. Doesn't matter if you think you're paying enough or training enough - if you can't find workers, you're not.
If you can't pay any more, then you need to make your job more desirable. Relocate to a more desired location. Change the hours or benefits. Change what parts of the job you can to be more interesting or fun. Build in career advancement pathways.
If you can't do any of that, hire people a
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Bullshit. In Silicon Valley we cant find enough Americans that are qualified
Increasing pay for workers in that field will magically bring more to that field.
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Bullshit. In Silicon Valley we cant find enough Americans that are qualified. H1-B is the only other choice to grab some of those newly trained graduates from our universities. H1-Bs pay into social security but canâ(TM)t use any of the entitlements. Itâ(TM)s a win-win. Sure there are some body shops that are abusing H1-B. Crack down on those guys instead and leave the quota for the graduate students.
There are 2 types of H1B's here:
The latter category is the one where H1Bs are nothing more than ways of beating the mar
Re: so .... (Score:5, Insightful)
H1-Bs pay into social security... This is a misfact and I'm really, really, really tired of hearing this nonsense.
I can assure you, H1B employees pay ALL THE SAME taxes as the US citizens. This includes Medicare and SS taxes. I know, I worked on H1B myself.
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Re:so .... (Score:5, Informative)
You presume India benefits from H1-Bs
India receives about $65 billion per year in remittances. That is about 3% of their GDP.
... as opposed to outsourcing, which is probably what most corporations who make heavy use of H1-Bs would do
India is not the only source of H1Bs. Companies will likely substitute Filipinos, Vietnamese, or Mexicans for Indians before they will outsource. When they do outsource, there is a big benefit to keep it closer, so Juarez instead of Mumbai for many jobs (it is not all software).
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India is not the only source of H1Bs. Companies will likely substitute Filipinos, Vietnamese, or Mexicans for Indians before they will outsource. When they do outsource, there is a big benefit to keep it closer, so Juarez instead of Mumbai for many jobs (it is not all software).
Indians account for about 70% of all H-1B applications and visas. The overwhelming majority of those Indians work for Indian consulting companies. Although these companies could in theory hire non-Indians, their employees tend to be overwhelmingly Indian, with some of these companies approach 99% Indian origin for their H-1B employees. The interesting question is whether these Indian companies would change to hiring non-Indians to skirt the per-country quota, or if their goal is to only target H-1B visas
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Eastern Europe. Well educated. Speak English well enough in most cases. Hard working. Smart. Cheap.
What's not to like?
For one is the total population of English speakers from which to draw.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If the entirety of Europe was considered then the number of English speakers from which to draw is about double that of India. Depending on how you define "Eastern" Europe this number is certainly something far less and likely on near parity with India.
Then comes things like access to jobs closer to home. It's probably a far less difficult decision to make to move to perhaps the UK than the USA. They c
Re: so .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Almost everybody in Eastern Europe is multilingual, most of them studied English in high school, and they speak English with the British and French tourists. And most of the rest of the European languages. Their English might not be great, but they learn quick because they already speak 3-5 languages.
This is especially true in Bulgaria, but also Romania. Not as many from farther north want to move these days.
Most of the government documents in all of Europe are processed in Bulgaria.
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That's funny, last I checked most polyglots could barely speak 5 languages fluently as per research. And India doesn't have one language so everybody there already speaks at least 2 not including English.
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That's funny, last I checked most polyglots could barely speak 5 languages fluently as per research. And India doesn't have one language so everybody there already speaks at least 2 not including English.
Indian languages have a common root, so switching between them is not like switching between English and Cantonese. Polyglots who speak multiple languages from the same region find a lot of commonality, I speak English and Spanish, I've been able to follow along conversations in Italian picking up every 2nd or 3rd word managing to get the gist of it (OTOH, any polyglot knows to be wary of false friends).
Also English is somewhat unique amongst languages where it does not have a rigid structure. You can es
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Indian languages have a common root
The Dravidian languages in southern India, and the Indo-European languages of the north are very different. Hindi is more closely related to English than it is to Tamil or Telugu.
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Most of the government documents in all of Europe are processed in Bulgaria.
What?!?
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My friend used to work in that industry.
For example, French voter registration is done in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian language is mostly phonetic. French people commonly spell their own names differently on their voter card than the way it is spelled in their legal records.
This causes a lot of problems for the Bulgarian workers, who are unlikely to speak French. (All French people speak English, unless they're talking to an American, so Bulgarians would rarely learn it) But in the end, the Bulgarians are able t
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Experience tells me that Eastern Europeans come to the UK and South-Eastern Europeans go to Germany. France mostly gets people from its former colonies in North Africa, although if you start including former colonies the UK gets people from most of Asia and the Caribbean.
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Maybe you should come to Eastern Europe sometime ...
We HATE US-America! We think you are a bunch of utter morons who literally actually ruin the entire fucking world! And we have proof!
If it hast to be western imperialists, why in the world would we not just go to e.g. Germany? They're a paradise compared to your shithole!
You have a typo. Here, I'll fix that for you. "We HATE US-America! We think you are a bunch of utter morons who literally actually run the entire fucking world!"
The reason America is so great, powerful, why we win everything is because we're a composite of the BEST every other nation on the planet had to offer. People used to immigrate here to mutually contribute, and become American with all that means. Unfortunately today the worst of the every other nation on the planet either 'hates' (resents) Ameri
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People used to immigrate here to mutually contribute, and become American with all that means. Unfortunately today the worst of the every other nation on the planet either 'hates' (resents) America for being the best, or they want to come here to be a parasite.
I disagree. Most or all of the foreigners I have met, worked with or lived around love the US. They understand the US is not perfect, but compared with what they came from, it is a paradise.
Also, I have worked with many, many foreigners, and I can say unequivocally that the vast majority works as hard or harder than native born Americans.
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Why do you assume they would not contribute to Indian economy even more when working in India?
Because productivity in India is less than a tenth that of America.
Due to corruption, inefficiency, lack of infrastructure, and cultural factors, poor countries are very bad at mobilizing human potential. When a Mexican crosses the Rio Grande, his productivity quadruples.
Re: so .... (Score:2)
And blackmail that might backfire. Here in Australia the general rule with government outsourcing is that data about Australians must be held in Australia where they are subject to Australian privacy (or lack therof) laws. This is *perfectly reasonable*. Would this disqualify Australians from accepting jobs in the US, or even for Australian companies setting up in the Us and hiring Americans?
That's a lot of collateral damage
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No, Australians with skills get higher quality visas than these ones.
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First off, Australians I have worked with get E3 visas, which is only available to Australians. So none of these rules would apply to them.
Second, India receives over 75% of all H1B visas, so if the US were to lower the caps by even 80% no other country would be affected.
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The Australian government isn't going to be putting restrictions on Visa and Mastercard, for example, on where they host their data.
Why not? When you have countries pushing for heavyweight surveillance powers under the guise of national security and taking a stance that their own citizens have rights but no-one else's rights matter, it's hardly surprising when the rest of the world is then sceptical about allowing those countries access to data on citizens from elsewhere and makes privacy laws accordingly.
This has been a stand-off between the US and EU for several years, and so far legal actions in the EU have been slow but eventually s
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Realistically, such payment systems will come from the US and China.
I don't see why that's realistic at all. The US is probably decades behind by now in fintech, and feels like it's still in the Dark Ages by typical European standards. China is its own world in this respect, and given the concerns (many of them probably exaggerated for political purposes) about Huawei even supplying edge infrastructure for 5G networks, it's not going to be a preferred choice for critical payment infrastructure any time soon.
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The State Department already made an announcement that no such policy is under consideration, and they strictly do not consult with individual countries over visa policy in the way described.
I recommend being skeptical until more information is available.
Re: so .... (Score:3)
I want the money in your wallet. I offer you a candy bar. "Blackmail!"
Not every exchange is blackmail.
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By this standard, every instance of international trade is blackmail:
Dubai refuses to sell oil to Italy unless Italy pays them money: blackmail!
The US refuses to sell (more) arms to Saudi Arabia until they stop bombing Yemen: blackmail!
Russia refusing to sell natural gas to Ukraine unless they negotiate transit payments for gas destined for Germany: blackmail!
Australia refuses to let company mine and sell coal to China unless they comply with local environmental regulations: blackmail!
Cou
Negotiation, not blackmail (Score:3)
India isn't satisfied with outsourced jobs, they want to own the businesses themselves (which is perfectly reasonable); the claim that it's about data privacy is just an excuse.
The US is telling them if they want to do business that way it's their prerogative, but actions have consequences.
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Re: so .... (Score:4, Funny)
We were talking about Pelosi, not Trump.
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sometimes even a blind squirrel finds a nut (Score:1)
it's absurd that 70% of h1bs go to indians. the list of things trump has done right is short but this is a good start.
Re: sometimes even a blind squirrel finds a nut (Score:2)
This will be fun - it will be refreshing to open up the H-1B visa lottery to allow more non-Indians into the country thru this program.
Interesting to note it doesn't limit the total number of visas, just the number from countries that meet certain conditions.
Re: sometimes even a blind squirrel finds a nut (Score:1)
Stop calling them "indians". hindus have nothing to do with Native Americans.
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Uhh, they come from India, do they not? Therefore, Indians is the correct term. When Columbus stepped foot in America for the first time, he mistakenly called the natives "Indians" because he thought he had arrived in India. You seem to be making the same mistake.
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Re: sometimes even a blind squirrel finds a nut (Score:2)
You really think this will selectively affect India? Cos I think you'll find the Europeans, Brits and Canadians and Australians have pretty much the same local data retention rules.
And if the Indians back down whilst all those white countries with the financial reserves to stand their ground until change of govt in 2020 don't , well it's gonna be *all* indians on those visas
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None of those countries make use of H1-B because those are allies who can easily apply for a high quality O visa if they have the sort of skills you need for H1-B.
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You really think this will selectively affect India? Cos I think you'll find the Europeans, Brits and Canadians and Australians have pretty much the same local data retention rules.
No they don't actually. The EU/Canada rules are that the data must be stored somewhere with adequate privacy protection.
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Why is it absurd? Factor in local wages, ease of working abroad, ability to speak English, relative living conditions and the number of STEM graduates and India is easily justified as the top source of H1-B staff.
Anything to hurt the program (Score:5, Insightful)
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This changes nothing (Score:2)
If you want to know who's taking bribes see here [opensecrets.org]. And if you want somebody to vote for that refuses bribes the Democratic party has a wing [justicedemocrats.com] that makes it a requirement to join. I don't know of a GOP equivalent though but if anybody does please chime in.
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Of course the real truth is that the only purpose of the H1-B program is to drive down labor costs for tech companies. We are just all supposed to pretend like that is not true.
And there you have it.
H1-B is really a tool for corporations to keep wages and benefits low, and keep the stock price up.
I'm sure the concerns and feelings of the share holders are top priority in this regard.
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visas need to be capped USC first! Not just IT (Score:1)
visas need to be capped USC first! Not just IT
Let me just say (Score:3)
I think India should embrace this. 150 billion IT industry is not being run by H1B, it just allows some big companies to pay less than the smaller ones because they dangle the carrot of H1B in front of young workers who want to see the world. This will reduce employee abuse in such companies, and allow more work to travel to India beside "UI".
Don't cap H1B, enforce a minimum wage (Score:1)
H1B is for when companies can't find the expertise they need otherwise, so set a minimum wage for H1B jobs of say $150-$250K/year and remove all caps
If they really need the expertise, they will pay it, and be happy to get the manpwer
If they are just looking to undercut local pay, they won't.
index the pay to inflation so that it doesn't have to be manually adjusted again and see what companies do.
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Something something mountain something... (Score:4, Insightful)
When corporations cannot move people to the jobs, they'll move the jobs to the people. With improvements to telecommunications, does anyone really believe that IT work must be done from a specific location on the planet?
Re:Something something mountain something... (Score:5, Insightful)
When corporations cannot move people to the jobs, they'll move the jobs to the people. With improvements to telecommunications, does anyone really believe that IT work must be done from a specific location on the planet?
I've once worked on a project where some of the people worked in Europe and I recall some very early teleconferences so that the people in the distant office could speak with us before the end of their work day. The time delay, the inability to simply pick up a phone to talk to them, all meant a lot of waiting.
There is no need to be in a specific location, but there is a need to keep people communicating. If I'm at my desk working and I have a question for someone halfway around the world that is asleep means that I will have to craft an e-mail and wait for an answer, try to find the answer myself, or contrive a workaround. If the person was in the next cubicle, or even in the next time zone, then things would have worked far more easily.
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I was in this situation several years ago - it wasn't so much an outsourcing issue, as much as a merger b/w 2 companies - one US, one Japanese - and one of our tasks were to integrate our ways of doing things. So this would occasionally involve teleconferences or phone calls to Japan. Since we were in the Bay Area, it had to be our evening and their next day morning. Or, sometimes, I'd allow them to call me home at my 3am if there was something we wanted to urgently close on.
Aside from what you pointed
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"With improvements to telecommunications, does anyone really believe that IT work must be done from a specific location on the planet?"
Why haven't they moved all IT jobs to India already?
We've had great telecoms for literally years now. Ask yourself: with great telecoms, why have we not exported all IT to low-cost countries? We do we still have an H1B visa program? Even H1Bs are much, much more expensive than a guy in India.
MBAs can pretend offshoring IT works but I'm an empiricist. If the data disagree
Don't cap it, just end the secondary labor market (Score:4, Interesting)
I work for an IT services company (a US citizen in the US.) I've seen the H-1B visa used to import some extremely smart and talented people to work at tech companies...these people aren't the issue; tech companies pay them well and they usually end up settling here. The core problem is the secondary labor market that the IT outsourcing companies use the visa to create. I've been at this for over 20 years now and have been through a couple of offshorings/outsourcings. All of these outsourcers are chasing the lowest possible cost to make margin on a deal. One of the ways they do this is sending all the work offshore. But when they can't realistically do that, they use the work visa system to create a revolving door of lower-paid workers. They'll use the L-1 and business visit visas as much as they can, and swap in one of their H-1B slots when companies need a more permanent resource on-site. Being someone who cares about what little bit of a "profession" we have in IT and SW dev, my main worry is that no one is going to see a future in IT and we're going to have even fewer entry-level trainees. You need that career ladder to grow smart people...a degree, coder bootcamp or a vendor certification only prepares you part of the way and (IMO) the best people in our field came up learning the basics in entry-level positions.
I think some give has to happen on all sides. First, the loopholes that the outsourcers use to swap people in and out on visas need to be closed. Also, unfortunately we techies need to realize that there actually is a soft salary cap on our work unless we're willing to put in 100 hour weeks at a FAANG company or similar. This salary gets pushed down by outsourcers exploiting these loopholes, but we need to be real and realize we're not going to get paid like doctors and lawyers for basic work. Finally, I think there'd be less pressure to use outsourced IT if tech companies didn't have to pay the totally insane salaries they do for people in Silicon Valley. I read somewhere that $110K is the real poverty line there when you factor in housing costs...which has them paying $250K or more for basic work. If companies didn't insist that everyone be packed in a "team room" shooting Nerf guns at each other and "doing Agile," they could branch out to places that were cheaper.
They're not using those loopholes as much anymore (Score:2)
Honestly if we had systems in place like Single Payer Healthcare & Tuition Free Colleges so that the wealth the H1-Bs generate made it to me and mine I wouldn't care so much. But America's a dog eat dog country for workers where your entire quality of life depends on your job, and H1-Bs take highly desirable jobs while ratcheting up the requirements for entr
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be real and realize we're not going to get paid like doctors and lawyers for basic work
Doctors and lawyers "get paid like doctors and lawyers for basic work" because they have a legally entrenched guild and licensing system in place. That's always an option, if you can come to terms with the ideological implications of it.
Re: Good (Score:3)
Will make no difference - same number of H-1B visas, just fewer going to Indian applicants.
Can't US tech firms hire non-Indian tech specialists?
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Can't US tech firms hire non-Indian tech specialists?
Not as cheaply.
India has a good tech education pipeline, but has an economy that is too dysfunctional to put them to work productively.
So millions of Indian engineers and programmers try to work overseas, or for outsourcing companies. Since there are so many, and domestic demand so weak, salaries are depressed.
An engineer in China makes several times the salary of an Indian engineer.
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Can't US tech firms hire non-Indian tech specialists?
Let's look at some statistics.
India is the second most populous nation in the world, with USA as third, and China coming first. India has over 15% of the world population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In India English is the second most popular language with 10% of the population speaking it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I'm not sure of the best means to measure the education level of a nation but literacy rate should give some indication. India has a literacy rate of about 86%,which happens to be n
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Can't US tech firms hire non-Indian tech specialists?
In India English is the second most popular language with 10% of the population speaking it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I'm not sure of the best means to measure the education level of a nation but literacy rate should give some indication. India has a literacy rate of about 86%,which happens to be nearly identical to the global average. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
That should establish the mere volume of candidates for technology workers within India. Then comes establishing their desire to leave. Does GDP work for you all? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
India simply has a lot of people. From which a large percentage appear to be comparatively educated, literate, intelligent, and already know English. They also are living in a nation lacking in wealth, at least compared to many other English speaking nations. Someone that can get even slightly above average on most of these measures will have the means to seek greener pastures in the USA, and quite a bit to gain from it.
The 'know English' part of the above is a crock. First of all, Indians speak more of a British version of English, and that too heavily peppered w/ Hindi expressions in b/w. More often than not, Indians have trouble following what Americans say, and vice versa. The ones who do come to the US young and settle here are better at it, but to state that the bulk of Indians, even the educated ones, are fluent at it, is a crock. Go to any Indian community group in the US - more often than not, they converse mo
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Will make no difference - same number of H-1B visas, just fewer going to Indian applicants.
Can't US tech firms hire non-Indian tech specialists?
Assuming this 15% limit on Indians goes through, that begs the really interesting question whether all 85,000 H-1B visas would actually be awarded. It's not just that 70% of the awarded visas go to Indians and Indian outsourcing companies, it's also that a corresponding outsized portion of the applications are from these same companies. For example, in 2017 [uscis.gov], 247,927 out of 336,107 petitions were filed on behalf of Indians, and 36,362 were for Chinese. If at most 15% of the 85,000 or 12,750 visas went to
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s/take away/train/
s/ourselves/them/
Most H1Bs do not become citizens.
Re:Blessing to India... and US (Score:2)
Fully agree w/ this, and both sides are justified. India is very much justified in requiring that servers that store the personal data of Indian citizens be physically located in India: as someone pointed out above, that's very similar to what the EU does. And it's not like the US is too fond of companies storing data about US citizens in countries like say, China. So it's the usual sauce for the goose being the ketchup for the gander...
And like you point out, it's a win-win for both. India keeps the